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A great source of friction then was that Japan's old-school Ambassador in Washington, Katsuji Debuchi. honestly knew of no other diplomatic technique than to tell the U. S. State Department, week after week and month after month, that Japan had not done what she had done and would not do what she then proceeded to do. This was not lying but diplomacy, according to the lights of Ambassador Debuchi and many another. Nevertheless, it did get on U. S. nerves. But Mr. Debuchi was among many who did not foresee or predict that President Roosevelt would recognize the Soviet Union, and for that failure the Japanese Government was able to recall him (TIME, Dec. 4. 1933). His successor in Washington, the youngest Japanese ever accredited as Ambassador to the U. S., had to be jumped over a whole series of Debuchis in the Japanese career service, where promotion is most rigidly formalized. He was boosted over the hurdles because Japan's now dominant militarists wanted their government to be represented in Washington not by a superbly polished and preserved mothball but by a Japanese New Deal patriot like themselves.
His Excellency Ambassador Hirosi Saito, who arrived in Washington year ago last February, was born the kind of youngster his wife had in mind when she drew the attention of an Embassy guest to a pair of superb paintings on silk of Japan's most symbolic fish, the carp. "See the carp swim strongly against the rapids and overleap even the waterfall." said Mrs. Saito. "According to Japanese ideas the carp is the symbol of courage and energy. Our young men are told to imitate the carp, who tests his strength by trying to jump over the waterfall and by swimming upstream."
Nowadays, on an average of once a week. Carp Saito appears before some more or less hostile U. S. chamber of commerce, club, or banquet and swims with such sheer vigor up the rapids of preconceived U. S. notions against Japan that he frequently manages to jump that particular waterfall amid a dazzling spray of half surprised applause. A sample of Saito at his best was Saito not only addressing the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations this winter, but rising with happy carp-leaps to hostile questions deluged upon him. Said whilom Ambassador to Britain Charles Gates Dawes who attended, "I believe it is unprecedented for the accredited representative of a foreign power to submit himself to cross-examination."
It was at Chicago that Saito had the courage to put an end to his government's long-maintained "diplomatic" attitude that Manchukuo is an "independent" Empire set up by its inhabitants' "spontaneous revolution." Quite candidly he declared that since Manchuria had been economically developed by Japan, Japanese believed they had performed "a rightful mission" in appropriating it.